Blogging as a Travel Businesses – Why it is Essential for Growth in 2020

Blogging is an often-overlooked marketing strategy.

This is especially the case for travel businesses where most of the efforts are focused on other online marketing such as social media and paid advertising.

Contrary to popular perception, blogging is thriving, and it can be the missing piece of marketing puzzle for your travel business.

We can’t overestimate the importance of blogging as it is a time-tested strategy which affects everything about your business including your SERP rankings, credibility, sales, and profitability.

In this article, we will discuss the topic of blogging for travel businesses in detail and will also shed some light on the benefits of blogging for travel-based businesses.

Why is Blogging important?

Blogging has several direct and indirect benefits and can prove to be a useful marketing strategy for travel agencies.

Blogging in its basic form is all about solving problems which your clients or prospective clients may have. Good content identifies the problems potential clients may be experiencing, and offers a solution.

Much like this article!

Great content can improve everything related to your business ranging from SEO to sales and is certainly the best marketing tactic to build a loyal and engaged customer base.

Businesses have been taking advantage of blogging to increase their reach, but travel, in general, has been slow to realise the importance of blogging for their marketing campaigns.

A well-maintained blog with regularly published posts will also be helpful to your digital marketing efforts as all social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter need a fresh stream of content to drive visitors to your website.

Blogging can be used for promotion, building a community and increasing your rankings in search engine results pages.

When done well, very few other marketing tactics can come close to blogging in terms of return on your investment.

Blogging is even more important for travel businesses as ideal customers in this industry tend to spend a good amount of time researching about a holiday or a specific destination they want to visit.

Due to the nature of travel industry, there are a wide range of topics detailing the culture, climate, customs of a place and most potential travellers are interested in knowing about the place before they visit it.

You can blog about anything which may be of interest to your readers such as:

• Destination guides

• Travel tips and recommendations

• The best time to visit a destination

It’s a good idea to focus on the pain points of your customers as by offering them solutions to their problems you will gain their trust and will be perceived as an authority within your niche.

Can Blogging can help you grow?

Several research studies conducted in the past have shown the importance of blogging on a regular basis as users cite interesting content among the top 3 reasons for following a brand on social media.

Your blog will serve as the feeder for your social media profiles and will help you in establishing your brand as an expert.

Blogging also affects the number and quality of leads generated.

According to a HubSpot study small businesses with a blog generate +126% more leads than their counterparts without an active blog.

Other studies have shown that almost 80% of users trust the information and advice which they received from a blog and use the tips and advice from their favourite blogs for making purchase decisions.

Blogging is also closely correlated with higher sales as most leads generated by blogging are of high-quality, which in practice means that a significant chunk of these leads will end up buying from you.

So, it’s obvious that blogging is beneficial for all aspects of your business and is the best method of marketing available today to businesses.

Benefits of Blogging as a Travel Agency

Blogging helps you build trust

Several studies have shown that a whopping 81% of people trust the information which they receive from blogs.

Blogs are also ranked highly by consumers irrespective of the industry.

This score is higher than the number of people who trust information received via TV ads, search engine ads and online banner ads.

It can be argued that modern blogs have evolved into something like the advertorials of the past which used sales copy in the form of an editorial and were preferred by marketers due to the trust factor inherent in this approach.

By having a regularly updated blog, you can easily build trust with your website visitors and prospective clients.

A blog can be used as a one-on-one conversation medium through which you could reply to individual comments left on your blog posts.

Blogging will allow you to build rapport with your clients as even a single reply will show the readers that you are ready to engage with them and are open to the suggestions of your readers.

Solve their travel problems

Marketing is the art of offering solutions to the problems which your customers are facing.

You can use your blog to provide solutions to the problems of your prospective buyers.

Travel is one industry where a buyer may be looking for specific answers to his problems such as which country to visit, how to behave in a specific location, what to eat, what is the best time to visit a place or which hotel to stay etc.

You can provide answers to all these questions via your blog and in the process convert your blog visitors into paying clients.

Several successful brands have used this problem-solving approach to gain a lead over their competitors and have grown into well-recognised names within their industries.

Blogging will help your SEO

Search engine rankings matter to most online businesses.

A lower rank on a search engine result page for your main keywords can relegate to the hierarchy within your industry.

Search engines need content-rich pages to help them quickly index a site.

Research has shown that websites with regularly updated blogs have +434% more indexed pages as compared to websites with no blogs.

Blogs result in 97% more inbound links as compared to sites without blogs.

Both elements are crucial to your search engine results page rankings as Google consider the number of pages a site has along with the number of high-quality inbound backlinks for calculating your website’s rank on its results pages.

Blogging will also help you with SEO, and you can start seeing results just after a few months once you start blogging.

Using a blog for SEO is much better than hiring an outside SEO agency whose fees may set you back by thousands of dollars.

Learn more about the importance of evergreen content:

What is Evergreen Content and How Should Travel Businesses Use It In 2020?

Blogging generates high-quality leads

Blogging is the best method for generating high-quality leads which will convert into paying customers.

Blog readers tend historically to have high disposable incomes.

They are researching to become more educated about a specific destination, meaning that you are reaching your website at a stage when brand identity and authority will play a strong part in influencing their buying decision.

Unlike other marketing methods such as social media, leads generated through blogging tend to be of higher quality and due to this reason blogging is preferred by veteran marketers over and above other marketing channels.

One of the lowest-cost, highest conversion marketing tactics

Blogging is cheap.

Almost anyone who can write and has a good knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, and writing can become a blogger.

Unlike other methods of marketing such as paid ads, blogging required little outlay in terms of capital and is one of the most cost-effective methods of marketing available to marketers today.

All you need is a computer and a little bit of creativity, and you are ready to blog.

Equally, you can outsource the writing to other writers, whom you trust to deliver the quality you require.

A regularly updated blog will require an investment of time and energy, but there is no requirement of spending your hard-earned money which makes blogging even more attractive option when compared with other forms of marketing.

Limited competition in blogging

Due to a lack of awareness, not many travel-based businesses are known to maintain active blogs.

This ensures that you will not face the competition which is known in the blogosphere.

Some niches are already saturated as there are thousands of blogs focusing on the same topic.

This is not the case with the travel industry as with the notable exception of large brands, few travel agencies or travel agents maintain blogs.

So, you can gain an advantage over your main competitors by posting even a few blogs a month, and over time this will allow you to beat the competition.

Blogging helps you in establishing you as an expert

Blogging allows you to establish yourself as an expert in your niche or specific industry vertical.

If you are selling cruise packages to Caribbean islands, then a couple of blog posts discussing each destination in detail will enhance your credibility and will firmly establish your website as a regional expert in the eyes of your readers and prospective customers.

You can choose to blog on specific topics instead of focusing on everything related to travel, and this laser-focused approach will allow you to target only those users who may be interesting in buying tour packages from you.

Promotion and branding

There is no other method as effective for promotion and branding as blogging.

Blogging will allow you to put your brand in front of your ideal audience and you can also promote the content which you create for the blog via other marketing channels such as social media networks and PPC ads.

Your blog will be the centre of your marketing efforts, while other marketing channels and tactics will become the various spokes which rely on the central hub.

A blog is essential for creating and executing an all-encompassing marketing strategy as you can’t do any type of marketing without content and blogging is the best way to create relevant and engaging content which your readers find useful.

Many marketers create videos, info-graphics, in addition to regular blog posts or articles which are then posted on their blogs and then shared to their wider audience via email newsletters, social media channels, and other mediums.

Conclusion

We hope you realise that blogging is vital for growing any business and due to lack of competition and a bit higher barrier to entry regarding time and effort required, it remains one of the best mediums available to travel businesses.

Travel businesses can take advantage of blogging as there are so many things about which people want to know before travelling.

A traveller is always interested in knowing more about the place he or she is going to visit, and a travel resource is often the first place which they refer to inquire about a destination.

Modern-day blogs can be compared to the colourful brochures of yesteryear which were highly sought after by travellers and used to contain detailed information about various destinations.

This provides an opportunity to travel businesses as one can use a blog for establishing their brand as the leading authority on a specific niche within the travel industry.

In light of so many benefits coupled with the fact that blogging is almost free of cost, it’ll be foolhardy to overlook this immensely powerful marketing medium which if used correctly can skyrocket your sales and profits.

As the famous quote goes, the best time to start blogging was 10 years ago, the next best time is today.